GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended
for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical
solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing
other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics
capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. Octave is
normally used through its interactive command line interface, but
it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. The Octave
language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily
portable.

August 6, 2014 — Octave 3.8.2 Released

Version 3.8.2 is a bug fixing release and is now available for
download.

One of the biggest new features for the Octave 3.8.x release
series is a graphical user interface. It is the one thing that
users have requested most often over the last few years and now it
is almost ready. But because it is not quite as polished as we
would like, we have decided to wait until the 4.0.x release series
before making the GUI the default interface (until then, you can use
the --force-gui option to start the GUI).

Given the length of time and the number of bug fixes and
improvements since the last major release Octave, we also decided
against delaying the release any longer. So please enjoy the 3.8
release of Octave and the preview of the new GUI. We believe it
is working reasonably well, but we also know that there are some
obvious rough spots and many things that could be improved.

We need your help. There are many ways that you
can help us fix the remaining problems, complete the GUI, and
improve the overall user experience for both novices and experts
alike: